"Festival Chants de Vielles takes place in the lovely, country setting of Montérégie, in a quaint and historic Québec village. The 12th edition promises, from July 1, 2 & 3, 2016, tasty, nourishing discoveries, fantastic meet-ups and deeply-rooted exchanges and will bring you a fresh and delicious musical harvest, providing a place for sharing and learning on a human scale. ...

We’ve got our fingers and toes crossed for this evening’s GRAMMY Awards Ceremony – our recording of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 is nominated in the Best Choral Performance category…wish us luck!

About the CD: "Following the success of their Monteverdi Selva morale e spirituale recordings, The Sixteen and Harry Christophers release a work often classed as one of the most significant collections of sacred music ever written: Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. ...

Roman Treasures from the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris
Location: The Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium, 417 East 61st Street, New York NY, US

Jessica Gould, soprano

Diego Cantalupi, archlute

Charles Weaver, theorbo

James Waldo, cello

Kenneth Hamrick, harpsichord

"A Cardinal who never took holy orders, Mazarin, né Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino (1602 – 1661), was born near Naples, grew up in Rome, and became Chief Minister of France. The most powerful advisor to Louis XIV was more fascinated by art than theology, and although Bernini in Paris would ultimately be the prize of Mazarin's successor, the Cardinal imported innumerable Italian compositions and a fair number of Italian composers to his adopted country. His dedication to artistic splendor was a hallmark of his tenure and a gift to subsequent generations. ...

"Capilla Cayrasco and its artistic director Eligio Luis Quinteiro are planning to record their first CD for Barn Cottage Records, dedicated to sacred music by Johannes Ockeghem & Josquin Desprez, in London in April 2016. We will be recording some of the most beautiful polyphonic works by these two important Renaissance Flemish composers, using a chamber choir of twelve voices. All the members of Capilla Cayrasco are professional singers, specialised in consort / a cappella singing, active with various other early music groups in the UK. ...

"Conductor, composer, musicologist, instrument designer and formerly virtuoso percussionist, James Wood’s multi-faceted career has led him into an extraordinarily broad spectrum of musical activities. He was conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford before founding the New London Chamber Choir, with whom he pioneered the work of many contemporary composers, including Xenakis, Scelsi, Kagel, Harvey, Viñao and Wood himself, as well as much little-known music from the Renaissance. In the 1990s he also founded the Centre for Microtonal Music and its ensemble, Critical Band, and was active in the dissemination of microtonality on many levels. In 2007 he left England for Germany, where he pursues a free-lance career as conductor, composer and musicologist. His highly acclaimed reconstruction of Gesualdo’s Sacrae Cantiones Liber Secundus occupied him for over two years from 2008 until 2010, and his recording of the complete set with Vocalconsort Berlin for Harmonia Mundi was awarded the ECHO-Klassik Prize for Choir Recording of the Year in 2013. ...

"Join us for an exciting week of concerts, classes, and friendship at the 2016 edition of the biennial LSA Cleveland LuteFest. The event takes place at Case Western Reserve University located in Cleveland, Ohio. This year the faculty includes lutenist Jakob Lindberg and soprano Dame Emma Kirkby, soprano Ellen Hargis, Xavier Díaz-Latorre, Robert Barto, Paul O'Dette, Nigel North, Christopher Morrongiello, Ronn McFarlane, Charlie Weaver, and more. The event Director is Jason Priset. ...

"The term, airs de cour, describes four- or five-part polyphonic songs extracted from extravagant spectacles of music and dance staged at the French royal court, known as ballets de cour.

Not unlike more modern songs drawn from popular musicals by Gershwin or Kern and published with piano accompaniment, evocative French airs were arranged and published for domestic use in the then standard performance format of solo voice and lute, enabling the less illustrious members of the public to indulge in the latest hit tunes whistled by those in the royal court. ...

"Much changes over the centuries—customs, costumes and food spring to mind. Games from centuries past have also evolved; though intriguing, most of the time, ancient games prove unplayable if you don't know their rules. This is not the case with card games, however. While the painted images on early cards might look different, the game itself is familiar, as an exhibition at the Cloisters in New York, shows. ...

Founded and lead since 1986 by Michel Laplénie, Sagittarius celebrates its 30th year in 2016 before putting to an end its activities. This anniversary year will showcase concert events punctuating Sagittarius' 30 years of involvement in Baroque music performances. The time has come to take leave and make place for new and emerging, young and talented ensembles, many inspired by Miche Laplénie.

As final contribution to the early music scene, there will be one final recording of Schütz's emblematic work : Musikalische Exequien. ...

On the final stretch of their series of Mozart’s piano concertos, Ronald Brautigam, Michael Willens and Die Kölner Akademie are working their way backwards through the composer’s catalogue. Here, on the penultimate disc, they have reached the earliest of the original works, composed in 1773 and 1776 respectively. ...

"The Polar Music Prize 2016 is awarded to the mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli from Rome, Italy. With a vocal range of three octaves and a unique ability to live a role with fullness of expression, Cecilia Bartoli has developed song as an art form. Cecilia Bartoli has spellbound audiences in the world’s great opera houses, but is not content with the well-known repertoire. She has also dug deeply into the history of music and presented long-lost music from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that is completely new to today’s audiences. ...

"There he connected with another foreign born musician, G.F. Handel who, in the 18th century was up to his elbows in opera production. Handel eventually named Caporale his principal cellist for which he wrote several solo obbligato parts ...

"My mind is blank, but down one inch deep I have, we have, access. Access to what happened before—the universe is embedded in all of us. Is that too dreamy? What we heard, what was seen, what was felt…all that was picked up along the way. As moments click by, we find ourselves moving through time and space picking up fragments of experience. Our senses are tuned to what we want to hear and what we want to block. ...

News from Spitalfields that they "we've got summer sorted"! "24 days of sumptuous early music, intriguing contemporary collaborations and spellbinding choral sounds collide in some of East London's most unexpected places, plus fun for little ones (and grown-ups) too. ...

"“The International Singing Competition for Baroque Opera Pietro Antonio Cesti” will take place in Innsbruck for the seventh time. Named after the Italian composer Pietro Antonio Cesti, who turned Innsbruck into a centre for the Italian opera north of the Alps in the mid-17th century, young singers from all over the world with a special talent and training will compete in the varied field that is the baroque opera for participation in the final concert on 26.08.2016. ...

"This album is a journey into the German school of music for solo viola de gamba and takes place in the years between 1705 and 1729. There are twenty-four years of music history between the earliest and latest pieces, namely the works by Schenck (1660 - 1712) and Telemann (1681 - 1767) respectively. In its own way, the programme symbolises the place occupied by instrumental music both in Germany and in Northern Europe as a whole in the first quarter of the 18th century. It is a landscape which shows the wide range of different influences on this repertoire - whether English, French or Italian - not to mention the extraordinary flowering of the German organ school and its stylus fantasticus. ...

In this instalment, Michel Rusquet takes a closer look at Johann Christian Bach's early beginnings to later influence and departure from his father's music style. "It made him the "London Bach" or even "the Bach of Milan". With this "youngest" of the son of the great Bach, we skip a generation, and - this explains it a bit - it deviates significantly from the family traditions." (Google Tranlsation) ...

Founded in 2011, the "Orgue en France" association has given itself the mandate of taking inventory of all organs, whether in playing order or in disrepair in France. According to information pulled from its website, France holds five centuries of the craft of organ-making; 10,000 organs; hundreds of other organ societies/associations; 200 classes of organs; 80 enterprises of organ-makers and hundreds of thousands of organ lovers.

It's most recent project is to find and inventory lost and forgotten organs in France. They have thus far ...

From recent postings from Dr. Phillip Serna, news of his very active and successful "Viols in our Schools" program. Follow Dr. Serna's account of his success stories and technique in his approach to teaching young students of the value of music, and, in particular, those of early music and music on viols. ...

"Though often imagined as a primarily English ensemble, the viol consort had a rich history in France as another vehicle for that nation's characteristically colorful and expressive musical imagination. ...

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